New player looking for advice for a knife / PK TM glass cannon build

[Taxi2Stock]

Howdy I was trying find a cool build a while back and started reading this post https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=5458.0 but it appears a lot of the links are broken.
I was having a lot of fun on it so far though I'm aware some of the information presented might be out of date.

My current build is something like this:
Level 4
Str: 3
Dex: 11
Agi: 8 (9)
Con: 3
Perception: 3
Will: 5
Int: 8

Melee: 30 (47)
Stealth: 30 (53)
Hacking 15 (21)
Lockpicking 11(20)
Traps 26 (47) (I currently have a trapper belt and trying to get the special knife to boost my skill)
Mechanics 15 (20)
Electronics 15 (20)
Tailoring 8(10)
Psychokensis 30 (32)
Temporal Manipulation 30 (32)
Mercantile 30 (40)

Perks:
Expertise
Opportunist
Psi Empathy
Recklessness
Quick Tinkering

So far the only enemy that has given trouble are the bigger beetles and I'm a bit stuck where I'm at. Though I have plenty of money.
Goals are getting a lifting belt, decent taser, decent shield, good knife, trap knife, rat regalia, and goggles (I forget the best kinds) I even managed to get some good rathound boots for the sneak bonus.

About half my weight is dedicated to bear traps but I don't have the skill to make moli's yet. Wondering how I should approach these beetles and make the best use of quick tinkering.

Screenshot is of my psi powers not really sure what innervation etc is. but I think I have too many things memorized at once. So each ability costs a lot. Telekinetic punch seems like my best way to stun for now. Not sure what else I have that would be useful againist these beetles. Kiting into traps hasn't turned out too well they seem to just walk around them or these damn gophers run into them and break my stealth.

Could someone help me come up with a plan to say level 10 and by then I should have no issue figuring out the rest.

[YBS]

Are you playing on DOM? 

If you are, I would consider rerolling since you are pretty early in the game.  Here's why:

• Because of enhanced psi costs, flatly using psi as your main attack is pretty difficult at this phase.  The most sustainable way to kill high priority targets at this point in the game is chem/throwing, so you can make molis/nades and kite packs into nuking them.  That 10 tailoring you have is specifically for making molotovs.  Right now you won't have this option for another 3 levels or so, which will make the quests after finding newton pretty painful.
• Your subterfuge skills are too low to get the equipment and money you're going to need to sustain your build, even with jackknife.  In four levels you're going to be expected to do Depot A, which has a recommended Lockpicking 43(with jacknife) and hacking 60 (for turrets).  No spoilers, but not having these there will mean you are going to have a bad time as a stealth character.

Good news is you haven't sunk a lot of time so I would outright reroll or you will probably get stuck.  Your level 4 should look something like this:
Level 4
Str: 3
Dex: 11
Agi: 8 (9)
Con: 3
Perception: 3
Will: 5
Int: 8

Melee: 30
Throwing: 30
Stealth: 30
Hacking 15
Lockpicking 30
Traps 15
Mechanics 15
Chemistry 23
Electronics 15
Tailoring 8(10)
Psychokinesis 0
Temporal Manipulation 0
Mercantile 30 (40)

Perks:
Versatility
Opportunist
Psi Empathy
Recklessness
Grenadier

Also, the broken links on that build page can be fixed by removing the " .tm " from the link.  Here is  the build you wanted to play:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQCAMDBQgAMgDCmR4Af1ErAEx4eENbCADChABGAABwTzEmKzAGKlwSS8KHAMKFTj7CsyknGt-_

That being said here's your major changes to your level 4 build and why I did them:

• Versatility replacing expertise: Instead of going for what are fundamentally low base damage differences from the early game, it is much better to be able to have access to using different weapon types in the early/mid game.  There are going to be several times where you dont have the right gear for the job, so those armor piercing bullets and shock bolts might be the only tools you have to deal with that sentry bot you found.  (just an example)  Specializing into versatility is also very, very strong late game for a hybrid build.
• Grenadier/Throwing replacing QT/Traps: Traps are awesome and you'll have time to ramp them up later in the game, but for now rushing Chemistry to 69 and throwing to 30 will give you strong grenades usable every 2 turns.  This will get you through countless 'pack' encounters before you get other options.
  
• Psi school points are gone and redistributed: The build you were using for psi was made back before psi was nerfed.  Now the AP on psi skills is very high until feats are taken and your base AP is boosted through other means.  This makes them a bad early game investment since they are not cost effective, YET, unless you stacked WIL and decided you wanted to try to make them do more damage.  That being said, tele punch is still a good stun, and temporal distortion does true damage against high armor targets if you don't have damage types that penetrate them available.   They're not bad skills to have, but their damage stays the same until you put FIFTY points in the school.  See here: https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Telekinetic_Punch

So I think you can still have your build, you just have to keep the new conditions of psi in mind.  I think you could afford to even not take psi at all until much later (post level 12) and still have a fun bomber/trapper/stabber build.  The major checkpoints you're going to want are for Depot A, which is where most builds get clever or get filtered.  On this build you'll want these by level 8:

Throwing 30
Trap 50
Melee MAX
Stealth 50
Lockpick 50
Hacker 60
Mechanical 20
Electronics 35
Chem 69

Everything else is a quality of life choice, but these stat blocks will let you do real damage and good hit %'s, sneak past things, break the locks and hack the things you need to, make repair kits, and make the bombs and traps you'll need to survive.

Electronics is higher right now because you will want to make EMP grenades.  I bet a lot of this is up to debate, but I wish I'd known this back when I started slamming my head against DOMINATING, so I hope this helps.

Best of luck!

P.S. - with this you can just blow the beetles up. If you thought fighting the two outside was bad....

[Guehlfirf]

Howdy I was trying find a cool build a while back and started reading this post https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=5458.0 but it appears a lot of the links are broken.

Just remove .tm from the link
Broken:
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgMQCAMDBQgAMgDCmR4Af1ErAEx4eENbCADChABGAABwTzEmKzAGKlwSS8KHAMKFTj7CsyknGt-_
Working:
http://underrail.info/build/?HgMQCAMDBQgAMgDCmR4Af1ErAEx4eENbCADChABGAABwTzEmKzAGKlwSS8KHAMKFTj7CsyknGt-_

[Taxi2Stock]

Are you playing on DOM? 

If you are, I would consider rerolling since you are pretty early in the game.  Here's why:

• Because of enhanced psi costs, flatly using psi as your main attack is pretty difficult at this phase.  The most sustainable way to kill high priority targets at this point in the game is chem/throwing, so you can make molis/nades and kite packs into nuking them.  That 10 tailoring you have is specifically for making molotovs.  Right now you won't have this option for another 3 levels or so, which will make the quests after finding newton pretty painful.
• Your subterfuge skills are too low to get the equipment and money you're going to need to sustain your build, even with jackknife.  In four levels you're going to be expected to do Depot A, which has a recommended Lockpicking 43(with jacknife) and hacking 60 (for turrets).  No spoilers, but not having these there will mean you are going to have a bad time as a stealth character.

Good news is you haven't sunk a lot of time so I would outright reroll or you will probably get stuck.  Your level 4 should look something like this:
Level 4
Str: 3
Dex: 11
Agi: 8 (9)
Con: 3
Perception: 3
Will: 5
Int: 8

Melee: 30
Throwing: 30
Stealth: 30
Hacking 15
Lockpicking 30
Traps 15
Mechanics 15
Chemistry 23
Electronics 15
Tailoring 8(10)
Psychokinesis 0
Temporal Manipulation 0
Mercantile 30 (40)

Perks:
Versatility
Opportunist
Psi Empathy
Recklessness
Grenadier

Also, the broken links on that build page can be fixed by removing the " .tm " from the link.  Here is  the build you wanted to play:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQCAMDBQgAMgDCmR4Af1ErAEx4eENbCADChABGAABwTzEmKzAGKlwSS8KHAMKFTj7CsyknGt-_

That being said here's your major changes to your level 4 build and why I did them:

• Versatility replacing expertise: Instead of going for what are fundamentally low base damage differences from the early game, it is much better to be able to have access to using different weapon types in the early/mid game.  There are going to be several times where you dont have the right gear for the job, so those armor piercing bullets and shock bolts might be the only tools you have to deal with that sentry bot you found.  (just an example)  Specializing into versatility is also very, very strong late game for a hybrid build.
• Grenadier/Throwing replacing QT/Traps: Traps are awesome and you'll have time to ramp them up later in the game, but for now rushing Chemistry to 69 and throwing to 30 will give you strong grenades usable every 2 turns.  This will get you through countless 'pack' encounters before you get other options.
  
• Psi school points are gone and redistributed: The build you were using for psi was made back before psi was nerfed.  Now the AP on psi skills is very high until feats are taken and your base AP is boosted through other means.  This makes them a bad early game investment since they are not cost effective, YET, unless you stacked WIL and decided you wanted to try to make them do more damage.  That being said, tele punch is still a good stun, and temporal distortion does true damage against high armor targets if you don't have damage types that penetrate them available.   They're not bad skills to have, but their damage stays the same until you put FIFTY points in the school.  See here: https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Telekinetic_Punch

So I think you can still have your build, you just have to keep the new conditions of psi in mind.  I think you could afford to even not take psi at all until much later (post level 12) and still have a fun bomber/trapper/stabber build.  The major checkpoints you're going to want are for Depot A, which is where most builds get clever or get filtered.  On this build you'll want these by level 8:

Throwing 30
Trap 50
Melee MAX
Stealth 50
Lockpick 50
Hacker 60
Mechanical 20
Electronics 35
Chem 69

Everything else is a quality of life choice, but these stat blocks will let you do real damage and good hit %'s, sneak past things, break the locks and hack the things you need to, make repair kits, and make the bombs and traps you'll need to survive.

Electronics is higher right now because you will want to make EMP grenades.  I bet a lot of this is up to debate, but I wish I'd known this back when I started slamming my head against DOMINATING, so I hope this helps.

Best of luck!

P.S. - with this you can just blow the beetles up. If you thought fighting the two outside was bad....

So looking through this I really actually like the idea of grenadier since I'll get reduced Cooldowns on crowd control grenades as well but I really want to maintain quick tinkerer. What would you recommend dropping in it's place other than one of the few psi talents. I'm still kind of between expertise and versatility just because I was already having a pretty rough time in early game and that extra base damage helped a lot. And I'm not exactly going to have the carry weight to haul around the extra weapons.